“Nothing” is deceptive. I hear sometimes that I live out in the middle of nowhere and there is nothing to do in a town of 800. But this place is full of “something” which has filled the vacuum left by 20,000 prospectors in less than 100 years. You would hardly know they were here. Yet the human presence has not vanished. A gaze upon the woods embeds it with myth, of Eden, Big Bad Wolf, and potential. Most paintings are about observation. I consider my work to be an extension of my interaction with and participatory invention of a rural mountain town. -Ellen Picken